Jury hears opening arguments in Jessica Tata trial

Jessica Tata, right, looks at her attorney Mike DeGeurin after she was sentenced to 80 years in prison Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012, in Houston.

Jessica Tata, right, looks at her attorney Mike DeGeurin after she was sentenced to 80 years in prison Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012, in Houston.

Photo: Cody Duty, .

Photo: Cody Duty, .

Image
1of/109

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 109

Jessica Tata, right, looks at her attorney Mike DeGeurin after she was sentenced to 80 years in prison Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012, in Houston.

Jessica Tata, right, looks at her attorney Mike DeGeurin after she was sentenced to 80 years in prison Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012, in Houston.

Photo: Cody Duty, .

Jury hears opening arguments in Jessica Tata trial

1 / 109

Back to Gallery

It's a choice no mother should have to face. Tiffany Dickerson had to decide between seeing her daughter in an emergency room or her son in the morgue after the siblings burned in a home day care fire in west Houston last year.

"The medical examiner was supposed to hold him for me," Dickerson testified about the death of 3-year-old Shomari. She stayed with Makayla, now a 3-year-old whose legs are scarred from the burns. "I never got to see him again."

Dickerson was the first of four mothers to testify Wednesday in an emotional Harris County courtroom against Jessica Tata, the 24-year-old woman accused of killing four toddlers in the blaze on Feb. 24, 2011.

Tata is accused of leaving the children alone to go grocery shopping as a fire broke out because a pot of oil was left on a hot burner.

During opening statements, a prosecutor said Tata even told a Target employee that she had left her stove burning at her home.

Tata's defense attorneys called it a frantic realization. Prosecutors called it a betrayal.

"She obtained the trust of six families," prosecutor Steve Baldassano told the jury. "And she betrayed that trust."

The children's mothers each testified Wednesday about the last time they saw their children alive.

Kenya Stradford testified that she watched medical personnel give her daughter CPR until she said it was OK to stop.

"They told me she was not going to make it," Stradford said in tears. "It's heartbreaking. She's a baby. She didn't know."

Elias Castillo's mother, Keisha Brown, said her bow-legged little boy was just starting to walk.

"He could say, 'Cheese' " she told a solemn courtroom. "Like for a picture."

Elizabeth Kajoh's mother, Betty Ukera, broke down as she talked of watching her little girl walk in to the day care.

"She turned and waved at me," Ukera said. "I just kept waving, and I backed up, and I drove off."

Tata's attorney, Mike DeGeurin, called the fire a "horrible accident." He argued that his client, then 22, tried to save the children, not hurt them.

Defense cites 911 call

He said Tata punched a glass window to get inside her house, and her frantic 911 call shows her intent.

Although she initially lied to neighbors and investigators about her whereabouts when the fire broke out, DeGeurin said, the intense media coverage and frightening situation was understandable for the young woman.

Tata faces a possible life sentence in the trial, which is being held in state District Judge Marc Brown's court.